


Nobody Move (And Nobody Gets Hurt)

by monanotlisa



Category: Killjoys (TV)
Genre: Episode Fix-it, Episode Related, Exploration, F/M, Hurt/Comfort, Multi, Post-Season/Series 01 Finale, Pre-Het
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2015-12-20
Updated: 2015-12-20
Packaged: 2018-05-07 22:17:26
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 2,290
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/5472584
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/monanotlisa/pseuds/monanotlisa
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>“We’re gonna be okay.”</p>
            </blockquote>





	Nobody Move (And Nobody Gets Hurt)

**Author's Note:**

  * For [YosiaSing](https://archiveofourown.org/users/YosiaSing/gifts).



Lucy is slowing down. 

Dutch feels the throttle reverberate through the ship’s floor, her feet, all the way up to her hands on the console. The ship has reached the equilibrium of her velocity and the force of Westerley's gravitational pull and starts to orbit Westerley. Dutch glances to the side at Johnny’s profile. Perhaps Lucy read the uncertainty of Johnny’s eyebrow or the hesitant line of his jaw. They could keep going, leave all the bombing even further behind, but. Dutch looks back, out through the cockpit into the Quad where the sun’s rays bring into relief its planet and moons. 

Safe in orbit, their motley crew of passengers leave the cargo hold, have let go of their hold on cargo not nailed down. 

“Where are we going?”

The voice from an Old Town woman Dutch doesn’t know rings out loud and plaintive and scared. She’s the only one who speaks, but it’s easy to see in the faces of all of them the question of their destination.

Next to her, Johnny breathes in and out. “We’ll not be able to go to Qresh.” His voice is so gentle in his ear, as if he were telling the harsh truth to her and not to them: Even if Lucy can fly under the radar these Westerlyns won’t. 

Dutch threads two of her locs and unthreads them in the same motion. Low-pitched like him, she says, “We can try Leith; there are rebel troops not just in the forests but also the mountains.” She remembers too well what happened to the last group in the woods --

And so does Johnny, because he clenches his jaw and looks to the side. “Even if our guests hate the Accord and the Nine enough to fight, these are city folks, Dutch, and tunnel rats to boot. They need roofs and hallways and kitchens and --” Dutch hears the hitch in his voice and knows he’s got something, “could really do with a fortress.”

Dutch thinks. It could work. It’s right here on Westerley, right below them. Dutch loves company on her ship, except she doesn’t, and she cannot drag Westerlyns who have never seen or set foot on even another planet in the Quad out into the depths of the J. Dutch doesn’t consider herself a worlds traveler, but she comes from a cluster far, far away, and so do Johnny and D’avin. And D’avin -- she’s not letting him go and not letting Khlyen get away. 

She swivels around, faces the woman and Westerlyns she’s seen but never learned names of. “Buckle back up, we’re going to the Badlands.” 

The Fortress that used to hold the women bearing the daughters and sons of the Nine is still there; Dutch and Johnny literally have the keys to the castle. It’s safe and sound, equipped not just with food and water but with luxuries. And what’s more, it’s on Westerley. 

She can take care of these people, and then take care of D’avin.

 

Within an hour it’s Lucy, Dutch, and Johnny again. They’re missing one crew member, and what’s worse they still don’t know how to find him.

Parked in the Badlands just outside the force field, Johnny rubs his chin with his thumb and index finger. Usually the sound of his beard-stubble distracts her. “Khlyen knew Old Town would be a heap of rubble soon, so he must have had a plan to get away. But Hill’s men were blocking ins and outs of the spaceport, and it seems a little visible for his liking anyway.”

She thinks of Khlyen’s figure at the edge of her vision, drifting in and out like smoke turning solid only to evaporate again. “Perhaps he whisked D’avin away through a wormhole using Force Storm.”

He grins at that, bright and boyish, so he caught her reference. It makes her feel warmer, thaws some of the iciness that seems wrapped around her chest. Johnny’s eyes meet hers. “Would love it if Einstein-Rosen Bridges were more like rope ladders, but I’ll go out on a limb and say Khlyen used a spaceship.”

“He certainly has the resources.” The images of the 71st floor of the RAC are etched into Dutch’s brain: the plasma computer, the reinforced plastic that made up the furniture. “Given the way the RAC housed him, he may have the means for the last generation of small and fast ships that are cloakable.”

Dutch can see the thoughts moving through Johnny’s head -- no spinning wheels for her boy; it’s sparks racing across circuit-boards. He’s been called stupid in his past on Onias III, and she does have his RAC Level as a lingering reminder of the education system’s grades leaving marks that mar records. In a system only about reading and rote learning he might’ve have seemed dim. But in a system like the Quad he shines like a sun. “Lucy and I have played with some mid-range monitoring of other ships’ movements nearby.” Johnny mercifully stops scritching his chin and looks at her. “If we can’t know Khlyen’s destination, we can at least see the direction he took off.”

Lucy has to rummage in her memory and adjust for outgoing ships, but the parameters allow narrowing the search to next-gen cruisers or ultra light hoppers within one mile of Old Town and to recordings within the last five hours.

When Lucy’s voice says, “Johnny, I have calculated the target ship’s path”, and Johnny asks, “What’s the nearest stellar body in its trajectory?” she knows Lucy’s answer already. Dutch and the ship’s computer speak in unison:

“Arkyn.”

 

“There’s a hole in the silo.”

Two lightweight space defenders are whirring around the ripped-open side of a white tower structure leaching debris into space. From her vantage point in a cloaked Lucy, Dutch can see figures in space suits working to close the breach -- there’s no habitable atmosphere on Arkyn (that part of the story wasn’t a lie). And of course, right there on the side, she can see the faded number in red: seventeen.

“Thanks for stating the obvious, Johnny.” Dutch replays both statements in her mind and then fast-forwards. “Actually, thank you. Brute force entry from the outside, use of advanced weaponry, and --” she looks out the window at the white shapes drifting by, “at least two floating corpses of medical personnel as collateral damage. What does that suggest to you?”

Johnny looks at her, blue eyes electric. “Military.”

“It’s an extraction job.” Dutch balls her fist, feels her nails dig into her skin. Whoever was looking, they found Red 17 and seemingly took a good chunk out of it: people, places, and things. “Could be his damn Sky Born. Could the Imperial Military.” Dutch and Johnny know too little about D’avin’s army past, so even if his brass decided to get their good little soldier back, their research will take too long to allow tracking.

Johnny makes a face because he gets there’s a certain Streetlight Effect at play, but he still speaks. “We know the Imperial Military has tried to find Red 17 in the past. I could easily establish a comms connection to your old contact, whatsherface?”

“General Adaeze.” Long before Dutch met Johnny but shortly before she married Khalil, the former Imperial General had sent Dutch on more than one wild goose chase in far-flung corners of the J. The General was also notoriously tight-lipped about her military ties...but, she had them; that’s where the tasks came from in the first place. “She’s not keen on providing information.”

“So what?” Johnny looks genuinely incredulous, and the part that makes Dutch almost feel sorry for the General is that (short of murder and harming innocents), he will do whatever it takes to get there. “The General doesn’t have to be keen. She just has to be convinced.”

Dutch does remember a thing or two from her assignments, and the Quad is far enough away from that hidden Emryn base to give her some buffer against the consequences of challenging one of the puppeteers of the J she will undoubtedly suffer. But what was that adage about short-term gain and long-term loss? She doesn’t give a toss at the moment. Adaeze wasn’t Delle Seyah Kendry (notably less genocidal, for one), but she wasn’t squeamish either. “Let’s go get her. And by her, I mean, her intel.”

His smile is her light at the end of the tunnel. It always is. 

 

It takes Dutch and Johnny one day to negotiate with General Adaeze, two days to track down the UFS Oblivion, and three days to get D’avin. 

By the time they drag D’avin across the gangway into Lucy, the ship has fired up the engines propelled out by the shockwaves of the explosion into the depth of space. Dutch is tired and relieved, and the dark circles under Johnny’s eyes paired with the slump of his shoulders tell her he feels the same. D’avin is his brother, D’avin is her -- fine; she doesn’t know what D’avin is to her, but she does knows he’s hers. 

Once they are floating in the relative safety of no-man’s land D'avin manages to tell his story: Khlyen abducted D’avin to Arkyn, introduced him into Red Seventeen, but the tech in D’avin’s brain dampened, so to speak, the Level Six progression (Dutch isn’t impressed with the RAC’s and the Company’s propensity for daft code numerals). Not long into the treatments, the experimentation chambers were ripped open. Soldiers streamed through the breach, taking hold of materials D’avin couldn’t pinpoint, of three scientists, of Fancy Lee and D’avin. The kidnapping meant another transport pod and a cell in a world of uniforms and insignia D’avin had thought he’d left for good. _But you know what they say,_ he said, smirk weak but familiar, _you can take the boy out of the military, but you can’t take the boy away from the military.”_

Cute. D’avin’s cute, but Dutch is not taking any more hasty steps with him; she’ll see what the next day brings, the next week or the next month. She may have eyes for him, but she’ll also have to have an eye on him.

 

Dutch leans her forehead against the door of the bunk room behind which D’avin has dropped into a deep sleep, and finally, slowly, exhales. The metal of Lucy’s floor is cold under her naked feet, and she shivers a little. 

“Want a blanket?” Johnny pads down the corridor, face softer than the cloth he holds. It’s true the soldiers ripped off Dutch’s leather jacket during the rescue, and given their blood-soaked state Dutch had to space her favorite boots. 

Now she turns her head to look at Johnny. He, too, belongs to her. “Yes,” she says. "Thank you." All the screaming earlier has made her voice a little hoarse.

Johnny blinks, perhaps seeing something in her face that she can't quite fathom yet. Still he comes closer and gently swings the blanket around her shoulders. Dutch exhales and feels the tension leave her shoulders and the goosebumps subside. This is Johnny, who tried to steal her ship so she aimed his gun at his head, then at his crotch until he tried to talk his way out of it. He ended up talking his way into her life, went from thief to comrade in arms to the best friend she’d ever had.

What about her? She’s no longer that desert princess with a gun and a pocket full of stolen memory chips in the hull of her dead husband’s backup spaceship. Yalena made it to the wedding she’d sought and schemed for. She didn’t expect love — she had trained too hard and too well to fall into the trap of believing in that. But she expected it all to last…or at least not end in an assassination. By the time Johnny met her, marriage and romantic relationships were off her list. The first was too hard to obtain and the second too hard to maintain.

Now they’re here, five years later, in the hull of the same ship. For so long there seemed to be no need to reconsider the Dutch-and-Johnny Show. But safety is gone from the Quad thanks to the the Kendry coup, and since D’avin tumbled into both their lives stability has been hard to come by as well. Dutch wouldn't trade D'avin for the world at this point. Just, after all the soul-searching in the last few weeks he's just not the only Jaqobis brother she's thinking about. Johnny’s standing so close she could lean forward just a little and kiss his right ear -- the one he had cut off because he’s an idiot and he takes chances on too many people. 

Perhaps it’s time to take a chance with him, too. Not without talking, of course. Johnny loves earnest chats and heart-to-hearts. If she's read him right and he's interested after all -- well, he's going to love negotiating this big, messy, beautiful thing the three of them can have.

Dutch takes a deep breath and, half-tangled, wraps her arms around Johnny’s body. He makes a sound of surprise, then pleasure, and pulls her even closer. The blanket behind her and the furnace of his body chase away the last of the cold she’s felt for so long. Dutch closes her eyes, puts her head on his chest, and listens to the steady, strong beat of his heart.

Johnny is holding her so tight she feels him speak as much as she hears it. “Dutch, hey. D’avin and you and I are gonna be okay.”

It’s not him who has to fix things all the time. It’s on her this time. When Dutch echoes him, it's a promise: 

“We’re gonna be okay.”

**Author's Note:**

> Many beta thanks to st_aurafina and wickedwords! You're the best.


End file.
